The Kariapatti Pediatric Eye Evaluation Project: baeline ophthalmic data of children aged 15 year or younger in outhern India

Purpoe To etimate the prevalence of ocular morbidity among children of rural outhern India before developing a ervice delivery model for community-baed pediatric eye care. Deign Population-baed cro ectional tudy. Method Trained field-worker performed door-to-door enumeration in 74 randomly elected village of the Kariapatti block in outhern India to identify children aged 15 year or younger and performed viual acuity meaurement uing Cambridge crowded card and external eye examination with torchlight. Pediatric ophthalmologit further examined ubject with ocular problem identified by the field-worker. The clinical team performed repeat viual acuity meaurement with Cambridge crowded card, refraction, lit-lamp anterior egment examination, and dilated poterior egment examination at the creening ite. The ophthalmologit identified and recorded one major caue for each viually impaired eye. Reult Field-worker creened 10,605 (94.6%) of 11,206 children enumerated, and identified 1,441 (13.6%) children a requiring further clinical examination. An additional 449 children identified a normal by the field-worker were randomly choen for repeat examination at the creening ite. In all, 1,578 (83.5%) of thee 1,890 children were examined at the creening ite. According to World Health Organization criteria, 6.2 of 10,000 children were blind; 42.9% of thi blindne wa potentially avoidable. Refractive error (0.55%, 95% confidence interval: 0.41, 0.69) and trabimu (0.43%, 95% confidence interval: 0.30, 0.55) were the major ocular morbidity in thi population. Concluion Developing an appropriate ervice delivery model for thi region will require a balance between the relatively low prevalence of morbidity and blindne and the need for ervice in thi population.